Factors Influencing Crowdworkers’ Continued Participation Behavior in Crowdsourcing Logistics: A Textual Analysis of Comments from Online Platforms

Abstract

With the lazy economy’s rise in the digital era, the demand for crowdsourcing logistics delivery is increasing. In this process, the continued participation of crowdworkers has been a considerable challenge. In order to further clarify the influencing factors of crowdworkers’ continuous participation and better and targeted incentives for their participative behavior, we use ROST-CM 6.0 software to conduct textual analysis on 3000 comments from crowdworkers on China’s Meituan and Hummingbird crowdsourcing logistics platforms. The results show that the order dispatch system, reward and punishment system, and platforms’ service are the key factors concerned by crowdworkers. The total negative sentiment among crowdworkers regarding crowdsourcing logistics platforms is close to 20%. We also find that crowdsourcing logistics platforms still have room for improvement in the quantity and quality of orders dispatched, the evaluation factors and the appeal system for reward and punishment rules, and the freedom and flexibility of distribution work. Otherwise, this might lead to a trust issue between crowdworkers and the crowdsourcing logistics platform. Based on the research findings, we recommend that the crowdsourcing logistics platforms should enhance service awareness, provide a better work experience for crowdworkers, and optimize platform functions. The government should act as a regulator as well as a service provider. This paper’s innovations include methodologically, from the perspective of the crowdworkers, online comment texts are used to mine the behavioral factors that influence the crowdworker’s continued participation in crowdsourcing logistics; content-wise, it adds fresh insights to existing research on how the order allocation system and platform reward and punishment mechanisms affect the crowdworkers’ continuous participation behavior.